The Burning Thread
by iSpecs
Summary: Six years have since Rachel spoke her prophecy but nothing has happened. Life continued normally. But now, the son of Poseidon begins to have wild dreams again, this time alluding to a war of the gods. What do these dreams hold for the Heroes? Percabeth.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the material from the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series so don't sue me. I'm just a humble scribe.

**From Me**: Hey everyone, after finishing this series earlier this week I decided to sit down and write for a while with what came to my mind as a possible future. Anyways, drop a review after you're done. Enjoy it! :)

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**Percy Jackson & the Olympians**

**The Burning Thread**

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_Seven half-bloods shall answer the call._

_To storm or fire, the world must fall._

_An oath to keep with a final breath,_

_And foes bear arms to the Doors of Death._

I knew this place. I had been here time and time again in both my dreams and when I was awake. It was the hallowed Mount Olympus, the home of the Gods. But it was not Olympus as I knew it.

Each and every building on the great mountain – the marketplace where the minor gods, goddesses and demigods gathered all day long; the individual shrines, statues and temples devoted to the mountain's inhabitants, even the very mountain itself – lay in utter ruin. Every few feet there would be a smoking crater, some of them just empty pits of blasted land but some holding the body of whichever demigod or satyr had been unfortunate enough to run over that particular spot as the fire rained down. Even as I stood at the elevator connecting this sacred world to the mortal world I felt myself torn apart at the sight of pure destruction that lay spread out in front of me.

In the distance I could just barely see the gates of the Palace.

The gargantuan doors had been blasted through leaving a smoldering pile of stone and Celestial bronze at the entrance to the last precious place in all of existence. I could see the wreckage from here, could smell the burning stone and sulfur in the air, could hear the cries and screams from the forsaken souls that had taken to Olympus as a last refuge. It was enough to drive me insane, enough to make me turn back around and return to the first floor of the Empire State Building then take off running. I didn't want to have to go any further up the mount; I couldn't bear it… but I knew that I had to. I had to see for myself. I took off running toward the palace. My legs burned and ached as my heart pumped acid directly into each and every muscle in my body, sapping my strength with each and every step as I drew closer and closer to the throne room of the Gods. I did my best to shut my ears to the wailing all around me; there was nothing I could do for any of them… there was nothing I could do for anyone anymore. It was already too late. _I _was already too late.

By the time I reached the outer courtyard it felt like my body was burning from the inside out as each and every ounce of my energy continued to pour out of me as though someone had pulled out a cork hidden underneath my skin. With every heartbeat I prayed that I would not see what I thought I would, prayed that I would at least be allowed that tiny bit of peace but deep inside I knew it was nothing but worthless wishing. The blasted columns and melted piles of Celestial bronze all around me were all I had to see to prove that but still I pushed myself up the last few stairs.

That was when I saw him; the bearded man in the dark pinstripe suit that I had prayed to my father would not be there. He lay still next to the hearth, Hestia holding his head in her lap and watching over her motionless body with the same fixed hopeless gaze I could only imagine I was looking at him with myself. I could literally feel myself slip right then, could feel whatever little bit of life that had desperately been holding on inside me loosen its grip and give way to the pull of the Underworld. Hestia looked at me at that moment, her fire-like eyes conveying all the pain and sorrow that they could as I just watched the still face in her lap. The god of thunder was dead now, I had failed.

In the distance, I could hear the booming manic laughter of the destroyer as he proclaimed his victory.

"**ZEUS HAS FALLEN! LONG LIVE ARES, LORD OF ALL!"**

With those words, I let myself die.

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Chapter 1: My Dad Makes a House Call

_June 3rd, 2015_

"Percy?" The voice was like a whisper on the edge of my hearing pulling me away from the sight of the burning Olympus as the world faded black. It sounded so familiar, so perfectly inviting that it drew me out of the wreckage and back toward it. "Percy!" Once more it called my name, this time a little bit louder. I knew that voice. I knew the person that spoke through it who now called me out of this desolate ruin and debris. I could almost picture the cool gray eyes, the knowing smile on her tan cheeks. "PERCY!"

My eyes opened slowly as I gradually took in the world around me in a simple effort to prove to myself that this was reality and what I had just witnessed was nothing more than a nightmare. Annabeth was leaning over me, looking down at me with that same worried look she had had night after night for the past three months when the dreams first started. Her face was partially hidden in terror-filled shadows in the deep darkness of the barely moonlit room we were in, leaving only her glimmering gray eyes watching me with that anxious stare while I could make out the faint outline of her lips and chin. I knew without her saying it: the dreams were getting worse again.

"What time is it?" I asked weakly as I tried to sit up. I felt clammy right then and my clothes were soaked in cold sweat like I had been running a fever.

"A little before three. I… woke up a few minutes ago." Annabeth murmured, refraining from saying that I had been thrashing about because of the dreams again. She leaned back off me so I could sit up fully; I didn't even bother trying to get comfortable again because I knew I wouldn't be going back to sleep tonight. I never did after I had one of the dreams. "… Who was it this time?"

"Ares…" I muttered half-heartedly. I had had this same dream at least twice a week for the last three months now and each and every time it always ended the same: Zeus was dead and one of the other gods was proclaiming their victory. I had seen the same scene at least twenty times now with a different voice announcing to the great Pantheon that 'Zeus has fallen'. So far Hades, Hera, Apollo and Artemis together, Athena, Hephaestus, Dionysus, Aphrodite and even my father Poseidon had all been responsible for the deed in my dreams. And of course now Ares had joined that list.

"Any other changes?" She asked fearfully even though she knew the answer before I spoke again.

"No. It was still Zeus in Hestia's lap, just like the other times. Everything else..." My words sounded as frail and feeble as I felt right then. You see, when a Half-Blood dreams, they are different than a normal mortal's dreams. Instead of just entering the realm of subconscious where a normal person's dreams react to whatever is going through their mind right then; when a Half-Blood dreams they see things. The past, present, and future get jumbled together like someone had thrown them into a blender and then dumped the contents directly into my sleeping mind. Sometimes I saw things that had happened ages ago; sometimes I would see situations my friends and family were going through. And sometimes I would see shadowed glimpses of things that might be coming. That was why these dreams were wrecking me inside each and every time one of them reared its ugly head in my unconscious brain. Even though I _knew_ that none of the gods could ever truly die, even though the events that I had witnessed time and time again in this recurring nightmare of mine were simply ludicrous, they still scared me to death.

Annabeth didn't respond. There was no way she could try to reassure me that it was just some psycho-semantic problem that was all in my head; no demigod would doubt exactly how disturbing seeing something like this would be night after night. Dream therapy didn't really apply to people like Annabeth or I.

"I'm going to go take a shower… then I've got to contact my dad, see if I can't make sense of this." I whispered as I softly moved her off of me, my free hand moving to push back a strand of the shaggy raven hair that fell to my shoulders.

"Percy…" She responded almost inaudibly.

I stopped to meet her gaze for just a moment before lips met. It was pure ecstasy wrapped up in a tender ferocity that I still had yet to really figure out even now after six years together with her. Annabeth, she just understood me. She had a way about her that wise far beyond her years, something I could only guess she inherited from her mother Athena.

"Thanks, I needed that." I replied simply as I smiled. Though I didn't say it nearly as often as she deserved, I loved my fellow Half-Blood fiancée more than she could have imagined. It was something that had grown through years of her seeing and accepting me at my best and worst, years of standing beside me through some of the darkest times in human or Olympian history, years of fighting off monsters and the tears that came at the price of fallen friends. Kissing her once more on the forehead I just murmured to her, "Go back to sleep."

Annabeth nodded tiredly while her eyes had already begun to flutter heavily as she laid back down beside me. "Good night Percy…" She whispered as she once again drifted off.

Hanging my head I climbed out of the warm and comfortable bed and made my way as silently as possible to the master bathroom of our little house by the sea. Flickering on the light before starting the water, I was immediately greeted by my own reflection in the bathroom mirror, a pair of haggard and hazy sea green eyes lined with thick dark circles from too many restless nights. My black hair and goatee was all a disheveled mess from tossing and turning thanks to the dream. Even so though, I had slowly become almost a younger version of my dad's favorite form as a human. However, I didn't really have the energy to dwell on this so I just stripped and climbed in to the nearly scalding hot water.

My thoughts slowly began to clear as I stood there and let the water fill me with strength. Instead of focusing on the dream even more than I already had I thought back to how I had gotten to this particular point in my life.

It had been almost six years since the War of the Titans as the Olympian historians had begun calling it, six years since Luke had given his final breath to stop Kronos from plunging the world into a dark age that it had not seen in thousands of years. Life had become… almost peaceful for me in that time. I had completed four consecutive years at the Goode Academy and stunned myself by graduating like a normal mortal; dyslexia, ADHD and all. Annabeth had gone to a private school near mine while she helped design the rebuild for Mount Olympus following the war. Her designs were stunning, the kind of genius work that only came out of someone like a child of Athena.

But even beyond all that something more important to me had happened: we became close.

It had started out slow; a kiss now and then, a date whenever we had a moment to share. As we grew up though, we were faced with the fact that we had an opportunity that few Half-Bloods ever received: the gift of living into adulthood. That was when I proposed.

So six months later here we were, living in Montauk near my mom's old vacation home in what appeared to be a normal cozy little house nestled next to the Atlantic Ocean. To any mortal it would look plain enough, a single-level cottage with white washed wood paneling outside that was slowly eaten away thanks to years of exposure to the salty ocean air and a small wood pathway that led down from the backyard to the a dock on the ocean front. However; the house had actually been an early wedding present from my dad so only those who could see through the Mist could see it for what it really was: a small palace made of blue and white stone and Celestial bronze. The front was lined with beautifully crafted columns engraved with pictures of the sea and the back was a giant deck that opened down to the sandy beach and surveyed the open ocean to the horizon. The inside of course had been designed with a more human resident in mind than it would have had it been for my dad but it still had that same air of grandeur that Dad's palace had.

Coming back to the present though I was still left with my current problem and no Olympic dream house was going to take care of that for now. With a deep grumbling sigh I let my head hang under the heavy flow of the burning water as I gathered my thoughts until I had at least an idea of what I was going to say to my dad about this. Annabeth was the only person who I had dared to tell about the dream so far. She was the only person who I knew I could count on to put any kind of stock in the possible dangers of this little delusion of mine. Everyone else, they would take it however they saw fit and then they might pass it along to someone else. And this was not something I wanted circling around the rumor mill.

I climbed out of the shower a moment later and put on a pair of old blue jeans and a spare T-shirt before putting a single golden Drachma in my pockets. Doing my best to remain quiet for Annabeth, I carefully snuck out the back door of our house and made my way quickly down to the water's edge.

The waves were pacifying tonight as the lapped lazily against the shore of our home but I needed a bit of spray to be able to reach my dad. Concentrating, I reached out and pulled the water up and left it swirling in front of the full moon. It was enough to give it just the tiniest shimmer so without waiting I tossed the coin and watched it disappear in the misty spray before saying "Poseidon's Palace."

A moment later the image became clear. I was looking in to the throne room of my dad's gigantic palace of the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. It had been rebuilt since his last battle with Oceanus and looked pretty similar to his last one which meant giant columns that stretched the length of some skyscrapers and twisting spires seemingly pulled from the coral themselves. It was cool to say the least.

"…Dad?" I asked as he stepped in front of whatever Iris used to send the image.

He turned at the sound of my voice, surprised to hear me calling him I assumed. He was once again in his favorite human form, dressed in a green and red Tommy Bahama shirt emblazoned with numerous little golden tridents along with a pair of khaki Bermuda shorts and worn leather sandals. His black hair was combed back and gave me a good view of his deeply tanned face.

"Perseus! What brings this call my boy? The house treating you nicely?" He asked in that booming tenor he had in common with Zeus. It was a tone of command, probably having come from thousands of years ruling over the seas.

"Yes sir. The house is doing fine, thank you again for it." I replied casually as I stretched my neck and averted my gaze. I didn't really want to draw this out.

"Good to hear. How is your bride to be?" Okay this already wasn't working. I needed to get away from the small talk and bring up the issue that brought me out here in the first place. But… I was kind of leery of mentioning it and understandably so. I mean; how was I supposed to tell Poseidon, one of the thirteen great gods, that I was having possibly prophetic dreams that he or one of his fellow deities was going to overthrow Zeus, the king of the gods. And not just overthrow but kill. What a great way to start the day.

"Annabeth is great, Dad… But listen, there was actually a reason I contacted you tonight;" I muttered. "Are you alone right now?"

"No. Why would I need to be?" He asked with a puzzled expression.

"Who is around you at the moment?" By the gods could he please just take the stupid hint?

"I am attended by my generals and various members of my court." He spoke in a tone that almost sounded boastful. He was at heart a good man… well a good deity I mean; but like the rest of the Olympians he sometimes had too good of an understanding that his lifestyle was far superior to that of a mere mortal. "Amphitrite is at my side tonight; as well as your half-brother Triton."

I grimaced when I heard those two names as I could only guess that they were grimacing at hearing mine. Amphitrite was my father's immortal queen and Triton was his rightful son and the heir to his kingdom… although with Dad being immortal too I don't think he'd ever inherit it. However, every time he mentioned them it just brought me back to the realization that, despite how much he loved me, I was still an illegitimate child and I could only assume that Amphitrite _probably _disliked me for that. "Is there any way I could convince you to come see me for a moment or two? I promise it won't take long." I regretted asking that instantly but there was no way around it. I didn't want to tell him about the dream with others around.

Luckily for me though I guess my expression sold my need to have him around because after a second he just closed his eyes and nodded. "… Very well. I will be there shortly." With those words the iris window began to shimmer for just a moment before it disappeared.

(I)

It was five minutes later that he rose up from the water. His approach was silent as he slowly broke through the water's surface. There was no fanfare this time, no roar of an honor-guard; he had come alone. As he rose to eye level with me I could not help but notice that his face had that same stern strength about it, that air of command that came with being him. It was kind of unnerving to say the least.

"What can I do for you, Percy?" His words echoed and rumbled as he spoke them, causing the tiniest little vibrations in the ground beneath my bare feet.

"I have a question I have to ask you… and I need an honest answer." I muttered as I nervously shifted the sand between my toes and struggled to keep his gaze fully. As soon as I began to speak again though was when the flood gates opened. "You see; the thing is I have been having some very… well very weird dreams lately. Well, actually no that's not quite right. It's really just one dream with a few of the details changed each time I have it. I really don't get why that would keep happening because usually a dream will be at least somewhat consistent and this thing keeps messing me up every time I have it. I mean, I guess I'd be messed up even if all the events in the dream were the same every time but at least then I could possibly make sense of it all but even then–"

"PERCY!" He roared. I shut up instantly, realizing that I had been rambling off. "Please. If you could sum it up?"

"Okay… Yeah, here goes. About three months ago I started having a dream." It took me nearly half an hour to tell the whole thing from start to finish. I told him about how vivid it all was, like each prophetic dream I had had so far as a half-blood, how it all seemed so real. Dad… he just remained quiet for the whole thing and let me speak my piece but I could see a look of worry growing on his face with each sentence that I spoke. It didn't sit well with me.

"... And that's everything." I finished sheepishly. "Tonight I had the latest dream. This time it was Ares who had laid waste to the Mount but everything else was exactly the same."

He fell silent for nearly five minutes before he finally opened his mouth and spoke once more. "… Are you absolutely sure that Zeus was dead every time you see him in this dream of yours?"

I stared at him straightforwardly, our nearly identical sea-green eyes meeting in the same grim gaze. "One-hundred percent. But I know that's impossible. I mean sure, sometimes a deity can fade away when their realm of power slowly fades from their control kind of like Pan did but there's no way someone could actually kill one of the gods. I mean, that's kind of what immortality means right?"

He didn't answer the question but rather once again he went silent. Inside I was worried but I followed suit and just shut up, watching the expression on Dad's face the same way a detective might study the scene of a murder. His darkly tanned became frozen in a poker face while he thought silently to himself; his eyes looked right through me as if I wasn't even standing there instead of looking at me and I could not make out any of the feelings or thoughts he was hiding underneath that piercing gaze so I decided to just ask the most clear-cut question these dreams had posed for me since the day I had started having them. "Is there a way? I mean… could one of you actually be…"

"Killed?" He spoke hollowly, finishing my sentence for me. "No, not that I'm aware of. We can be damaged, torn apart, ripped asunder and cast into Tartarus itself but we cannot be killed in battle. Kronos was proof enough of that. If we could have killed him or some of the other Titans once and for all then believe me when I say that we would have eons ago. My brother would have seen to that."

"Then what does it mean?" Great, I was right back to square one. I had no idea what to make of the dream and now I had just found out once of the biggest and most terrifying thoughts posed in it was completely impossible.

"I don't know, Percy; I don't know." His eyes betrayed a feeling of uselessness that I felt too regarding this dream. Like all the other dreams I had had since I discovered my heritage, it felt like someone had just unlocked some awe-inspiring piece of information to me but this time I had no way to make heads or tails of it. I felt stupid. "Listen thought; who else have you told about this so far?"

"Just you and Annabeth. I… didn't want to sound like a weirdo to anyone else."

"Good. For the time being I want you to keep it that unless I tell you otherwise." His voice was stern now, stern enough to let me know that this was not up for debate. Even though I was a young man myself now, he was still both a god and my dad so he kind of outranked me on the decision making scale. "I will have a talk with Zeus about this later and try to make some sense out of it. Perhaps Morpheus can explain what is going on regarding it. For now though I want you to just continue on with your life like everything is fine. And under absolutely no circumstances are you to mention this to any of the other gods or goddesses. Do you understand me?"

"Yes sir." I replied as strongly as I could. I felt like I should have saluted him right then.

"Then have yourself a good night Percy." With those final words he patted me on the shoulder then strode back into the water and a moment later was gone beneath the waves, leaving me standing there alone along the Montauk beach front. I felt relieved but dejected by the conversation. It left me just about where I was before Poseidon had come up from the deep; I knew the dreams meant something but I was now just as sure that what Dad had said about there not being a way to kill a good being sure. It didn't mean much but it did mean maybe I would be able to get back to sleep afterwards from here on out. So with a sigh and a weary smile I just turned away from the edge of the moonlit water and headed back toward the house. After all, I had to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in about five hours when Annabeth and I were due at Camp Half-Blood to start our yearly duties as part of the counselor team for the summer.

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**Me**: Well there you guys go for now. Hope you liked it so far; I'll try to be back with another chapter here soon enough. Thanks and remember I want to hear what you think of it. Constructive criticism is always welcome. See you all next time :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Me**: Hey guys, after a surprisingly good turnout for the first chapter and some positive feedback from the ladies and gents over at .com, I'm back with chapter 2. Now from here on out, I just want to say that whatever you might expect from my story, don't. I love to throw curveballs just to screw with people when it comes to writing :D Anyways, drop me a review after you're done and tell me what you think, like, and dislike. Enjoy it!

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**Chapter 2: I Get Attacked, Grover Gets Puberty**

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"Hey… Is it morning already?" Annabeth asked sleepily as she slowly woke to the tiniest beams of light drifting through the curtains of our bedroom window. It had been nearly three hours since my conversation with my dad and the time had helped me to calm down a little bit. I still wasn't reassured completely; there was something about the way he commanded me to keep quiet that didn't sit fully with me but at least I was not hyperventilating at the thought that I had had some prophetic nightmare about Zeus dying. So instead of pacing along the shore of our section of the beach endlessly, I had come back and laid back down beside her between the ebon sheets of our bed, holding her sleeping form for what felt like a perfect eternity.

"It's alright; we've still got another hour before Nico and Felice will be here to pick us up." I whispered softly, pulling the dark blue curtains of our bedroom window a little tighter to once more shroud us in soothing shadows.

Annabeth smiled as she pulled my arm around her waist. Her skin was warm in all the right ways and smooth like silk. The mere elation that coursed through my nerve endings as I held her was enough to bring me back from the doom and gloom that had overtaken me when I first awoke almost four hours earlier. I don't know how long we laid there. It had probably only been a few minutes by the time she spoke again but my mind was so far gone I couldn't bring myself to care about the time, only about the woman that lay curled up against me now. In the darkness of our bedroom her gray eyes seemed to almost shine with an otherworldly glow from deep within them. Her blonde hair fell around her elfin face and spread out like a champagne-colored halo on the black pillow beneath her head.

"Is everything okay now?" She murmured as she pulled my right arm even tighter around her waist, pulling her in just a hair closer against my body.

I closed my eyes for a moment, carefully choosing the words I wanted to say before I spoke. "Yes. Dad; he said that it was impossible for one of them to die. He reminded that even…" I paused. I was so very careful not to say Kronos' name in front of her, not out of a respect for the power of such things as it pertained to the Olympians but rather because I cared enough that it killed me every time I saw the change in her face mentioning that name caused. Even though it had been six years now the war was still such a trying subject for Annabeth entirely because it made her think about the man that had given his life to save ours. Luke had become a taboo subject to her… and I don't think that will ever change. "That even their enemies are still alive, even if they have had their physical bodies destroyed."

Annabeth did not respond but just sighed and moved her face in until our noses were less than an inch apart. After a moment laying there in that uncomfortable silence she just smiled wearily and said, "Then there's nothing to worry about, Percy. Everything's going to be alright."

"Always the wise girl." I replied with a soft chuckle.

"Of course. It's better than being a seaweed brain any day." Our little back and forth was one of my favorite things about my relationship with her. Even though we had grown up into these mature roles that we now played out, when I was with her I was still that same awkward but euphoric teenager that had kissed her in the lake at Camp Half-Blood nearly six years ago and she was still the voice of reason that had left me guessing for so long.

Without hesitation I pulled her in the last inch and kissed her tenderly, letting everything else go and enjoying one of the better minutes in my lifetime. She tasted sweet, like her lips had been brushed with a drop of honey as I kissed them with all my soul. Her breath was warm and saccharine as it mixed with mine. Instantly my body began to tingle in a way only she could make it, a way I don't think anyone else could ever understand because it was just too good to possibly put to words. I closed my eyes and slipped into the bliss of the moment.

Annabeth broke away first, her eyes opening with mine in that knowing affectionate look that only she could pull off. Her lips curled up in a smile that I knew better than my own reflection. I could only grin equally as my hands moved across the small of her back. "How long do we have until they're here?" She whispered, her breath hot on my neck.

"A little less than an hour…" I replied, my right hand drifting across her hips to trace the curves of the perfect body underneath her short white silk night gown. My fingers danced across the fabric just strongly enough to feel her body shiver and shudder fantastically beneath them.

"Then they can wait," She murmured as her hands moved to the button of the jeans I was wearing while I pulled her in again to kiss her passionately.

As if on cue, the most obnoxious car horn imaginable cut through the wondrous silence of our bedroom and ripped right through the high the two of us had been riding on since the second our lips first touched, killing the mood like it had just been zapped by Zeus' master bolt. My eyes shot open wide as both Annabeth and I instinctively clamped our hands over our ears and grimaced equally. Sitting up I immediately pulled back the curtain just wide enough to peer outside into the brightly sunlit morning and see Nico di Angelo and his Aphrodite-born girlfriend Felice Rosehaven parked on the street outside in his classic jet black convertible Lincoln Continental.

"He's early. Bastard." I muttered.

Beside me Annabeth just shook her head and chuckled lightly, rolling over so she could sit up next to me and take a peek out the window too. "You should probably go out there before he wakes up everyone on Long Island." I nodded, rolling my eyes as I climbed out of the bed and buttoned my jeans back then ran to the front door. Slipping on the pair of worn leather flip-flops lying in front of the large hardwood door with its Celestial bronze trim I just took a second to sigh in annoyance. Meanwhile, Nico's response was to honk on his loathsome car horn once more; I think just to spite me. Shaking my head I just opened door and walked out into the unbearably bright June morning.

"Morning!" Nico roared with an almost grating level of enthusiasm as he leaned back against his car. His enthusiasm had become part of his nature in the last few years. This was mainly due to two reasons. The first was because of the way that Hades had changed after the war six years ago. Once the god of the Underworld was welcomed back upon Olympus, Hades' demeanor had become in a word softer. He was less vengeful, less angry, even less manipulative than the skeleton king I had first met nearly eleven years ago now. This had rubbed off on his son, who slowly started to transform back the kid he still was at heart. The second reason though, well that one was a little more to blame. In the last few years, Apollo had taken a bit of a shine to Nico and had kind of taken him under the god of poetry's wing. Nico had responded in kind by picking up some of the… cockier qualities of Artemis' twin brother. He still wasn't half as bad as Apollo was but I didn't think anyone could be. "You guys ready or what? I wanna get going immediately!"

"Nico, I am going to _kill_ you." I ground out, dragging my thumb across my neck while giving him the most menacing evil eye I could manage.

At that moment the door opened behind me as Annabeth rushed outside, having slipped into a thin yellow sundress that perfectly matched the color of her long hair. Her hair itself was a disheveled mess that came from our little moment just a second ago before Nico interrupted us. Meanwhile her cheeks were red with a deep blush that her frazzled cheeriness did nothing to help calm at all. Immediately she crossed the brilliant lapis lazuli and Celestial bronze pathway that Tyson had crafted for us as part of his wedding gift to run over to the two of them. "Nico, Felice! It's so good to see both of you!"

Trudging slowly I followed her over to them

"Annabeth, you look beautiful as ever." Nico said as he pushed off the car and hugged her. The girl beside him, his girlfriend Felice, stepped out of the Continental as well and followed suit with her boyfriend. Felice was one of Aphrodite's daughters and had been at the camp now since about a year after the war so this was her fifth summer. Like so many of our current residents at the camp, she was of the demigods that had been found across the country after the Olympian Oath was sworn to Styx. However, the girl – like most of the children that filled up Aphrodite's cabin – was stunning, with shimmering raven hair and azure blue eyes set within a petite heart-shaped face. Nico had taken a liking to her the moment the satyrs brought her to the camp and here they were five years down the road. "Percy, you look like death warmed over. And let me tell you I know exactly what that looks like. You ever see Aeacus, Rhadamanthus, or Minos up close? It's like looking at Joan Rivers after another fifty plastic surgeries."

My right eyebrow cocked up as he said that and I couldn't help but chuckling heartily at the simile. The kid had gotten a sense of humor in the last few years, I'll give him that. "Good to see you too, Nico. Felice, how have you been?" I replied, a little more hospitable now.

"I have been doing simply exquisitely. Lady Herrera has been expressing some interest in incorporating some of my designs in her Fall line." Being born of Aphrodite, it was no big coincidence that Nico's girlfriend sort of reminded me a bit of the late Selina Beauregard. She carried herself with a distinctive grace and careful atmosphere that spoke of her inborn tendency to focus on the beauty of everything. According to Nico, she had spent her time creating fashion designs since before she came to camp which really came as no surprise.

"_The_ Carolina Herrera? I'm impressed Felice. You must have worked ridiculously hard on your sketches." Annabeth said incredulously. Meanwhile, I was already getting bored of this conversation. The fashion industry… blech.

"Baby, I'll be right back. I'm going to go grab our things so we can get the car packed." I hurriedly interjected, casting Nico a sideways glance as I gave Annabeth a quick peck on the cheek. His expression was all the communication I needed from him to know he wanted to come. A part of me wanted to leave him there with them as payback for ruining Annabeth's and my intimate moment a little earlier but I could not do that to another man. It was like asking for them to invoke revenge from the goddess Nemesis. So as I turned away from them to head back into the house, I just called back to the group. "Nico, I'm going to need your help inside okay?"

"Of course! What are friends for?" His response sang of sweet relief. "I trust you two can manage by yourselves for a moment? Good. Percy, wait up!" The Hades-born demigod didn't even give Annabeth or Felice a chance to respond before he took off down our pathway to catch up with me.

As soon as we were inside the house and out of earshot of our respective better halves his cheeriness dropped and a look of release just washed over his olive-skinned face. "By the gods Percy, I owe you one big man. I love Felice to death but I've heard hours upon hours about her fashion deal during the drive from L.A. over the last few days and I think if I have to listen to another minute about the advantages of using turquoise over royal blue fabric again I might just use my dagger on myself." He spoke exasperatedly, huffing his shoulders with a sigh of relief.

I turned and looked at him as we made our way through the house to the living room where both Annabeth's and my bags were packed for camp this year. "No Nico, you owe me two. You're an hour early." I muttered as I quickly unzipped mine and double checked to make sure I had everything packed like I needed.

"Your point is?" He asked with a shrug, his light brown eyes staring at me in confusion. Dressed in a pair of black biker's jeans and black leather boots with a black riding jacket he had put away his aviator's jacket for over his orange Camp Half-Blood shirt, he looked like a Halloween-themed member of the Hell's Angels which made me smirk inwardly. He still had the same messy mop of black hair and olive skin he had had since the day I first met him and his sister but now his features were much more defined and he had actually gained quite a good deal of muscle in the last two years."I figured you would like to get to camp as early as possible so we can get settled before all the campers start arriving."

"Annabeth and I were… indisposed… when you pulled up." I muttered, shooting him a sideways look.

"Oh. Oh! Oh man, I'm so sorry! I had no idea!" He backpedaled and wrung his hands together as he got what I was saying to him. "I mean… just wow. Now I just feel like a massive blocker today."

Blocker… that sounded like something he probably picked up from Apollo rather than from anyone else in his life. I wasn't naïve enough to not know what it meant but I just couldn't picture Hades or gods forbid Persephone or Demeter talking like that; it didn't suit them. The god of poetry and the sun however, well that was _right_ up his alley. "Yeah… Your timing was just spot on today." I grumbled a little more, eliciting another apology from the young son of Hades. I couldn't help but roll my eyes though; even I saw how comical this whole thing was on a 'funny as long as it doesn't happen to you' sort of way. However, there was work to be done so I just slid Riptide into my front pocket and put Annabeth's hat in the back then picked up my bags as Nico picked up Annabeth's. "Let's just get these out to the car. As long as I'm up I might as well get moving."

"You sure it's safe to go outside yet?" He asked sarcastically. Looking back now, the timing was almost ironic.

BOOM!

The deafening boom from the blast tore through the house like the walls were made of a thousand amplifiers repeating the echoing carnage. The sheer force of it knocked me clear off my feet and sent me sprawling into the living room wall behind me while the windows shattered and rained razor-sharp shards of glass down upon me before I had a chance to cover up. Across the room Nico was thrown down to the floor, his eyes rolling back in his head as he was knocked unconscious from how hard he hit the hardwood floor. The world changed instantly for me. My vision immediately blurred, my ears rang and my brain swirled about as though someone had just unceremoniously dumped it into a blender and pressed the on button. Suddenly I felt numb and dizzy and everything around me became out of focus. I could not even feel the numerous open cuts on my face and arms from the glass that now peppered my body.

**"PERSEUS!"** The bestial roar was sheer torment on my ears; like someone had taken a knife to the side of my head and was poking around inside.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I needed to move. The most subliminal voice inside of me screamed at me to climb to my feet and run from the house. I had to get to Annabeth; I had to find out what the hell was going on around me.

I pushed myself to feet with every ounce of strength I could muster and ran outside as Nico lay there unconscious. I would come back for him but I needed to make sure Annabeth was safe first.

I tore through the front door like a lumbering beast just to see a sight I had never imagined I would: the sky was burning. I don't mean it like a small fire from a blown-out plane engine or something; no, the whole sky from the east to the west was all ablaze and roaring with the bright green flames that came from Greek fire. It was horrid, terrifying, hellish. I couldn't take my eyes off of it.

"PERCY!" Her scream snapped me back to reality.

My eyes ripped away from the burning sky and to Annabeth. She was kneeling in the middle of our yard with an unconscious Felice in front of her cut to shreds with a good dozen serious slices all over her body. Annabeth's face was a mixture of bewildered insanity as the world around us went to hell faster than we could process it. Her eyes were locked with mine even as she checked over Felice to try and stop the bleeding on some of her open wounds. Not even thinking, I rushed over and knelt down across from her, my hands working out of years of experience patching myself and my friends up as I made makeshift tourniquets out of my now ripped Camp Half-Blood shirt.

"What happened?!" I asked wildly as I tied one of my orange shirt bandages over a huge cut across Felice's forearm.

"I don't know! I felt the boom but didn't see a blast! When I looked up the sky was like that!" Her eyes screamed how scared she was but we had both learned over years how to hide our fears when we needed to.

**"IT HAS BEEN DECIDED!" **The voice roared again. I didn't know it. It wasn't one of the Gods or the Titans; not Kronos or anyone else I could think of as I quickly ran down the mental list of who would want to attack me. The list was massive, consisting of every monster I could think of as well as Poseidon knows how many other names; but none of them were capable of something this horrid, something this truly destructive! The voice came from something so out of my league I couldn't think straight! **"YOUR FATE HAS BEEN SEALED!"**

"Percy! Look!" Annabeth cried as her attention jerked up from the girl we were bandaging up to a spot behind me.

I whipped my head around to see the Greek fire descending from the sky in a spiraling pillar behind me. It dropped lower and lower, swirling about like a small tornado so close that I could feel the intense heat from the inferno as it stung my eyes and skin and singed my clothing. But the second it touched the ground I saw the figure inside it.

Standing in the middle of the great radiance of the flames was a man covered in armor so black I could only think it must have been Stygian Iron in its purest form. He was covered from head to toe in it but the armor was unlike any that I had seen worn by the Gods or even the Titans. It was perverted and dark, covered in many intricate carvings of skulls so warped that it seemed like I could actually see them screaming as the armor gleamed in the roaring firestorm. His helm had a slit down the middle of it and across his eyes like the way I had seen in a Spartan's helmet but I could not make out any part of him beneath the twisted raven metal. He was like a nightmare torn from some hellish fantasy that only those who went insane would see. I was horrified.

"Percy! W-We gotta go!" Annabeth's voice was a far away thing behind me right then. I couldn't think about running then, I couldn't even think about moving my legs. The only thought in my mind was that I had to stop him; that I had to defend her.

My hand moved on its own to my pocket for Riptide.

His speed was unreal.

Before I knew what had happened I crashed into the hood of the car and felt my body go limp like jelly. My eyes fluttered in and out of reality as I struggled to stay conscious long enough to see him. He had moved from the fire to throw me into the Lincoln like I was nothing more than a ragdoll and he was a juiced-up Arnold Schwarzenegger. I didn't even see his feet move; the whole thing happened in less than a split second.

"Get up! You have to get up!" Annabeth was leaning over me now, shaking my body violently as he walked across the yard now. Through the haze I could only imagine he was walking now to take his sweet time before finishing us off. He had completely ignored the unconscious Felice where I had just been kneeling and was coming for us. The man – or god or whatever he was – was an unstoppable beast. "Please! By the Gods get up!"

Her voice was so terrified but the darkness was closing in now.

(I)

My eyes were lying to me… or at least I think they were. That was the only explanation, the only way to make sense of what I was seeing as the world around me slowly slid into focus. It was all too familiar, all too much of a recognizable memory for me not to start freaking out immediately. For the second time in my life, I was slowly waking up in a deck chair on a huge porch with a grassy meadow lined by rolling green hills on the other side spread out in front of me. There was a blue and white plaid blanket spread out over my legs and a pillow behind my head but I knew there would be even before I felt it out with my hands.

_"Okay Percy, you probably just took too big of a bump on the head when you hit the car… You're in camp but you must be imagining things… Yeah, that's it. All of that was just an imagination; you probably didn't even hit the car! You probably got a concussion from something else and that was just some weird fantasy your mind made up. Bad dreams, that's all it is. Any second now, Annabeth is going to come to you and everything will be just fine…" _I murmured to myself to try and calm my nerves as I blinked twice to see if the surroundings would change or warp at all. I don't know why I hadn't noticed it before but at that moment I suddenly realized exactly how dry my mouth was. It felt like I had just done a face-plant into a sand dune and tasted nastier than a kiss from Mrs. O'Leary. And to top it off my jaw hurt like I had just gone twelve rounds with Briares.

Of course, that was when I noticed what was sitting on the small wicker table beside me. It was a tall glass with a green straw and a paper parasol filled with a gold drink the color of apple juice. However, I knew that that gold drink was something that would fill my insides with pleasurable warmth that would spread out through my entire body like a wildfire until even my toes curled from the tingling sensation it left behind. It was the drink of the Gods: nectar.

_"... Okay, this is perfectly natural. If you were injured then of course they'd leave some nectar or ambrosia out to help you regain your strength. It's just a bloody coincidence." _I thought silently. No matter how hard I fought it, a slow and terrible little idea was starting to creep inside my thoughts, something that truly scared the crap out of me to the point I had to close my eyes as I reached for the glass so I could not see my own hand. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't escape the fact that everything was too freaking similar. Everything was happening just like it had before; right down to the color of the parasol and the maraschino cherry it was stuck through inside the glass. But I had to keep calm; once I had a drink of nectar everything would right itself again.

Keeping my eyes shut tight I reached out and wrapped my fingers around the cold glass. My grip felt superbly strong like it always had since I had followed Nico's plan and bathed in the Styx. Oddly enough though, I had no control over it like I usually did. Instead, my grip just squeezed tighter and tighter on the cup until I heard the glass groan with a small cracking noise… then another… then one final one.

I couldn't hold it anymore, couldn't stop myself from looking. My eyes shot open just in time to see a hand that was mine yet wasn't mine snap through the glass like it a steel claw smashing through a small sapling. The hand that had done it was small and diminutive, more like the hand of a twelve year old kid than a twenty-one year old man. The muscles were underdeveloped and the palms were bare of the calluses that grown over ten years of fighting off blood-thirsty monsters and crazed Titan overlords.

"Careful." No. No! NO NO NO NO NO!

My eyes went wide and full of a fear I had been fighting with all my strength as I looked up to see the satyr who had just spoken that one word standing there. He was just as he had been all those years ago; the same curly brown hair, the same blue jeans and orange Camp Half-Blood t-shirt holding a Converse shoe box. I felt like I was about to be sick just looking at that box in his hands; I knew precisely what was in it but more than that I knew there was no way in Olympus or Tartarus that that box was even supposed to be here. This was too impossible, too far beyond the stretch and scope of my understandable reality.

It was Grover. He looked exactly the same as he had the first day I came to Camp Half-Blood. He was a teenager again.

**~*~*~**

**Me**: Okay there you go, Chapter 2 as promised. I've got some interestingly devious ideas planned for this little story so look forward to Chapter 3 here sooner or later. Anyways, drop an opinion and I'll see you all next time (or in therapy, whichever comes first). Peace :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Me**: Okay I'm back and first off I have a very popular review question to answer to all of you who read this thing: Yes he's invulnerable, yes I wrote he had cuts on him from glass. I also wrote that at around about 3 to 4 a.m. when I do most of my writing so I was not entirely there during it ^_^. Wasn't awake enough to realize my own little error there. I may go back and fix it later but as of right now I'm just too uninterested in it to go back or try to retcon it. To Dragonscall though, that one was actually intentional because the thing that attacked him is… well that's my little secret there.

Anyways, hope you all enjoy this chapter. Drop a review and tell me what you think. Peace.

**~*~*~**

**Chapter 3: I Help Wash Camp Half-Blood**

**~*~*~**

_"Grover, what in the name of the Gods do you think you were doing startling him like that?! Dear Olympus man, he had just barely awoken! You should have given him at least a good hour to get his mental bearings!" _I could just barely understand the muddled words being spoke in fierce whispers around me from a voice that I knew to be distinctively male and learned with a hint of refinement to it. I was just barely on the edge of unconsciousness right then… at least I think I was. I think I was having strange dreams, recollections of events that had happened almost a decade earlier in my life. I dreamed it was the day I had first come to camp, that I had woken up in that same chair on the porch of the Big House two days after I fought the Minotaur for the first time. I vaguely remembered Grover… or was it someone else? Were the voices I was hearing right now just part of this strange trip down the subconscious rabbit hole or was I really hearing them? _"AND WHY IN THE STYX DIDN'T YOU GET HIM TO DRINK SOME NECTAR?!"_

_"I was going to, Chiron. I arrived just in time to see him crush the glass in his hand like it was nothing!" _That was Grover's voice… I knew it was. Which meant of course that I must have still been dreaming and all this buzz-like conversation around me was just my subconscious' attempt at a practical joke. _"I mean he picked it up in his hand and then squeezed until it shattered into shards! How could a kid like him even manage something like that? I haven't even seen that kind of strength in the kids of Cabin Ares!"_

_"I don't know, Grover. Something is clearly amiss here; this __**is **__the same boy you discovered at Yancy Academy but I cannot shake some gnawing suspicion in my hooves that something about him is not quite right." _That was where I knew the other voice from; it belonged to Chiron, the trainer of Heroes. Chiron was a centaur and one of the finest men… err… creatures I had ever met. He had been with Camp Half-Blood training the demigods and acting as a sort of de facto leader as opposed to the constantly grumbling Mr. D. since long before I got there. In truth, he had been training Heroes since the time of Jason, Achilles and Heracles and probably would continue to train them long after I died, whenever that might be.

I could feel my eyes loosening from the grasp of the sleep, fighting my desperate urgings to remain in the black as they willed themselves to slowly start to ease so they could open.

"Quiet now Grover; he's waking up again." Chiron's voice came through much clearer this time. That was not a good sign. It should have started to disappear when my eyes started to open, not the other way around. "Now, just give him a second."

My eyes opened slowly, taking a good few seconds to take in the entirety of the world around me. It was almost nightfall now; the sun had almost completely disappeared behind me but was still high enough over the western horizon to cast my little section of the open sky in a brilliant rainbow of deep orange, crimson, dark blue and every shade that existed between them. Taking in my surroundings I realized I was still in the old deck chair on the porch of the Big House, the plaid blanket wrapped around me and a pillow behind my head. The green meadows were still right in front of me lined at the far edge with green hills that led to Camp Half-Blood's property line. In the dusky distance I could make out the faint outline of Thalia's Pine lining the top of a hill just on the outskirts of the land belonging to the camp but… where was Peleus? The dragon that protected the tree and the Golden Fleece wrapped around it for nine years now was nowhere to be seen, something that had never happened. He had watched that tree as diligently as Ladon so he wouldn't have gone for a… I don't know, a lunch break or whatever it was dragons did.

"Percy? Are you alright?" Chiron's voice to the left of me brought my attention away from my surroundings. I cocked my head to the left, turning on the pillow, only to see him sitting there in his wheelchair with his usual tweed jacket over a white dress shirt. His beard was shaggy and hair mangy as ever, giving him a wild sort of feel that went beyond his learned appearance. Behind him… the Grover that should not be stood there twitched nervously, his false feet tapping against the ground in agitation.

I closed my eyes for just a second and breathed deeply, tasting the air. I could taste the faint aroma of the strawberry fields on the other side of the river behind me, the salt water in the air from Long Island Sound to the north, the heady scent of the trees at the property line. Inwardly I cursed at it all. This wasn't a dream. It couldn't be; even given how disturbingly real some of my dreams had been in the past none of them had ever involved me so directly, not even the ones given to me via Grover's empathy link. Opening my eyes again, I decided against my better judgment to respond to the old centaur, hoping he could grant me at least some of the answers I needed. Maybe I really was just imagining Grover's appearance and everything around me. If they knew me, then that would be enough proof that I wasn't going crazy. And if not, well then there was a good chance that I was going to have a major mental breakdown. At least the deck I was sitting in was big enough to curl into the fetal position in. "Chiron… Did the Gods say what attacked us?" I asked honestly.

Both the centaur teacher and the satyr keeper looked at one another in worried trepidation and nervousness. I couldn't shake the odd terror that seeing Grover instilled me. He still looked like he had years earlier, even down to the small tuft of curly hair on his chin that I had wondered about back before I had learned the truth of what he was. In every single way he was identical to that Grover I had first met more than a decade earlier. His horns were just barely sticking out of the mess of auburn curls covering his head; his brown eyes had that same doughy kind of look to them that had existed before Pan's mission had become his all eclipsing goal. Just looking at him shook me and frightened me, made me want to reach for Riptide just in case he suddenly shifted and revealed himself to be some wretched monster in disguise like a satyr version of an _empousa_.

"What?" I asked after a moment of uncomfortable silence between the two of them and me. I was starting to get agitated, the battle-honed nerves which made up my mind sending impulses through me to get up and run away right then that I had to fight against with more and more of my willpower.

"Mr. Jackson, how do you know my name?"Chiron's voice was timid but curious. Not the response I wanted; not the response I _needed_.

"W-what… What is the date?" I asked now, ignoring his question.

"I… Why do you want to know?" His response conveyed the confusion he was experiencing. My hands were shaking now. I could feel my heart rising and my breathing becoming more and more shallow as my heart slowly climbed further and further into my throat.

Don't panic. Don't panic. Do not panic.

No matter how many times I repeated it inside my head I could not escape the steadily coming crash that I knew was following whatever Chiron said next.

"What. Is. The. Date." I asked more desperately now. Pushing myself up, I pulled the blanket off of my legs and forced them to work long enough to stand up out of the deck chair so I could look both him and the false Grover fully. There was a wild feeling coursing through my body now, the same kind of pure adrenalin high that had overtaken me when I had emerged from the Styx after taking on the Curse of Achilles. I could feel the strength in my muscles and the power that flowed through my veins as a demigod… but these were not things I was in control of. I as a person was merely a cursory observer watching these events play out while my body – separate from the soul that is me – oversaw and commanded the path that these next moments would take according to its own instincts. My brain was just a prisoner inside a living cage.

"It's June 5th, 2004, Percy. You've been asleep for two days since-" I held up my hand to keep him from saying it. I didn't need to hear what he was about to tell me. They thought it had been two days since the Minotaur. I knew it had been two days since I was attacked.

"No." I could only whisper that single word before my legs took over. I turned away from them and started walking. Then jogging. Then sprinting. Behind me I could hear the centaur and the satyr calling after me but I was too far gone now to stop or even acknowledge them. I had to get to the coast. I had to get out into the open water and shout my lungs out until Poseidon came up from the depths he ruled long enough to blast me with his trident and take me out of this horrible nightmare.

Out of the corner of my eyes I could see the kids on the volleyball courts stop playing and stare at the black-haired psychopath racing toward the ocean along the coast of the creek. A few of the faces seemed familiar but I could not stop to look at them. To look would be to accept this reality as true. I _could not_ do that.

"Percy! Please stop and talk to us for a moment!" Grover called out. He was still behind me but was gaining quickly; it came with being a satyr.

"Stay away from me Grover!" I cried back, running as fast as I could without turning around as I ran past the arts and crafts building. My eyes were starting to mist over as tears I just could not fight began to well up and cloud my vision. I was scared, petrified even. All of this was impossible and yet everything in this camp – every single face and building I could see all around me – was exactly the same as I remembered it from my first summer here. Chiron couldn't have been lying about the date; he wasn't that kind of man. "Just stay the hell away from me!" The world was growing blurry around me as my frustrated tears caused everything to drift out of focus. I could make out the lake to my left and the Amphitheater further ahead of me but everything was starting to grow hazier and hazier as I forced my eyes closed to try and blink out the saltwater. However, that was when Grover finally caught up to me.

He grabbed on to me as best as he could and tried to pull me down to the ground but all he did was made me lose my balance. My left foot twisted underneath the added weight of Grover on my back and sent me spiraling down the shore of the lake with the curly-headed satyr following right behind me.

A split second later, I hit the water.

I was at home again. The wondrous liquid in the lake was a cradling embrace that calmed and rejuvenated me as I felt out the current as it carried on to the Atlantic so close by. It my paradise, a sign that my dad was looking out for me even as I fought against everything around me. As I sank deeper and deeper into the depths of the waters I felt at ease for the first time since I had woken up, as if something in it was just whispering to me that I could hide in its warm darkness until my brain had time to fix itself and I came back up to Camp.

"Percy!" I could hear the distinctively female voice clear as day as it called to me. It was the only truly familiar tongue in this whole place, a sound of truth echoed through this wall of lies that made up this reality I was now stuck in. It called out to me in the depths of the lake as though it knew I was down here to hide, as though it knew who I really was instead of just another undetermined camper who was going through culture shock. I didn't want to see the face the voice came from but I knew it would break through the surface of the water at any second and I would have no choice but to accept everything for good now.

It drove me insane.

I wasn't safe enough yet if I could still hear that voice. I had to push it away, had to get it away from me as fast I could make it go. I could feel the pressure building within me as I pulled my arms tight around me, the water seeming to draw in closer as I did so until it receded away from the shores and drew in all around me. I shut my eyes as tight as I could while the water pressure increased greater and greater around me. If I was not the son of Poseidon, I think the pressure would have been enough to kill me in a split second but I stayed still and contained in the water like a depth charge planted in the middle of the lake.

I was waiting for something now, some signal.

"Percy!" The voice called out again, that same damned voice. That was the signal fire.

The water all around me exploded out like a tidal wave in all directions as my brain gave way to the mental stress and just shut down.

(I)

"I can only surmise he's suffering from some sort of… I don't know; maybe post-traumatic stress given what he was talking about in both his sleep and when he was awake. It's only natural considering what he witnessed back outside the boundary. However, how he knew my real name, much less anything else about this camp is beyond me. Grover said that he has been kept in the dark about his true heritage so far." That was Chiron's voice again which meant that I had not escaped from the fresh hell I had awoken to when Grover had met on the deck of the Big House. "Could you take a look?"

My eyes fluttered open to the sound of the voice, something I instantly regretted as the light overhead led to a burst of agony as it fueled the migraine I had woken with. I was sitting tied by vines to a chair in the middle of a room in the Big House I recognized as the camp's make-shift infirmary with a small group of people standing in front of me, their eyes watching me with fearful and nervous gazes. In front of me sat the camp's director himself in all his frumpy and grumpy glory with his tiger-striped Tommy Bahama shirt and purple track shoes looking like a hung over mobster on casual Friday. Behind him… well those were faces I was a little more broken to see. At Mr. D's left, Chiron sat in his wheelchair with Grover still beside him like a scared puppy. On Mr. D's right was a group comprised of all lead councilors including Clarisse, Luke, Silena, Beckendorf, and even Lee Fletcher and Katie Gardner along with the heads of the rest of the cabins. Beside them all though, the young girl whose voice I had heard inside the water just watched me with those inquisitive little gray eyes of hers. But… her expression was much more masked and unreadable than any of the others in the room with me; I didn't know her mind.

"…Well?" Chiron said after a moment. I could only assume it was because they were waiting on Mr. D.

"…You do realize I really couldn't care less if this brat is suffering from insanity or not. Little punk probably brought it upon himself by pulling stuff like he pulled down at the lake." Mr. D grumbled back, not taking his eyes off of me. I had grown to sort of respect the old wine god after all my time here at camp. Sure he could be a bit of a pain in the neck and cared less for his charges than any camp councilor in the history of summer camps but he had treated me better after Castor was taken.

"Would you please just take a look?" Chiron pleaded. "I don't know about you but I personally would like to avoid another outburst like the one that we saw a little earlier. I believe they're still trying to clean up the Amphitheater after his little display down at the lake."

"Pfft… fine." His hands moved to the sides of my head and clasped over my ears like a vice, blocking out all of the background noise in the room as he whatever it was that he did to diagnose me I guess. My pulse began to race; this was the first time one of the Gods had ever done anything like this to me. I wasn't sure if it'd be painful or if I would even feel it. I didn't know how long it would take, what his reaction would be if he saw the thoughts and memories that populated the deeper recesses of my gray matter. However, a second later I heard his silken deep voice in my head even as his lips remained still. _"Sit back and relax punk. I won't kill you… yet."_

I think my eyes rolled back in their sockets right then. Instantly a slideshow of every major and minor memory I think I had ever had since I had first come to camp flashed before my eyes like I was about to die. It was a greatest hits collection of big fights, small victories, enemies and friends and those caught in between the two. Every intimate detail of my life inside the boundaries of this divinely protected place and every recollection of the quests I had undertaken in my life were laid out before me to see. I was floored by it all, my mind suddenly so much wearier and my body feeling so much more ancient. However, there was one set of memories that kept overriding anything else my mind could conjure: my life with Annabeth. It consumed everything else, hid the long buried reminiscences of the War and of Luke's last moments, erased bitter thoughts of burning shroud after shroud during those dark years, and did away with anything else I could think of but her.

She was lying beside me in the bed back in our house along the Montauk coast, the full moon outside our bedroom window casting her blonde hair and gray eyes in such a radiant pale light that she could have been a ghost. Her touch set my skin ablaze and her scent drove me to perfect madness. It was the only pure memory I could find.

"_By Olympus…"_ Mr. D's deep tones reverberated through my skull softly as the memories instantly stopped, leaving me to refocus my vision back on him as he removed his hands slowly from my head.

The room was silent as the god in the tiger-striped shirt stared at me with a microscopic glare as though he were looking at a horrid criminal whose crimes were being read by the jury. I wanted to shrink away from his sight but I could not; the vines around my wrists and ankles were so tight I could feel them cutting into my skin every time I shifted nervously. All I could do was sit there and wait for Mr. D to say something… to say anything.

"Well is he cured now?" Grover piped in after a moment, apparently unable to stay quiet any longer.

"Shut it, kid;" Was the camp councilor's terse reply before he finally turned away from me and looked back at the small crowd of people behind him. His voice had dropped the deep intensity I had heard in my mind and instead a cold fury had replaced it that seemed so uncharacteristic for the usually grouchy and cantankerous camp leader. "Chiron, Ms. Chase; you two remain where you are. I want the rest of you out of here and get back to your individual cabins. Tell your cabin-mates that all activities are cancelled for the rest of the afternoon and they are to remain in their cabins until otherwise told. And Zeus help you if you argue with me!"

They hurried out like frightened animals. Luke was the last out the door of the make-shift infirmary, his azure blue eyes taking one last long look at Annabeth before he closed the door behind him. It was… well it was just disturbing to see him again as it was to see everyone else as they were now but I forced myself to keep it together until Mr. D turned his attention back to me. His hazy, bloodshot eyes were now clear and focused as they constantly darted back and forth between the young Annabeth and me.

"Girl, what do you remember?" He ground out after a tense second. I couldn't tell if he was going to kill us or just turn us into rabbits or whatever animal he happened to fancy this week. All I knew was that I wanted to get out of that room right then and there.

"Percy?"

The way that Annabeth looked at me and murmured my name said everything I needed to know, everything I had been wondering since I first saw her before I lost consciousness down by the lake: she was going through the exact same thing I was going through. At that instant I had to fight the urge to tear through the vines wrapped around my wrists and ankles and go hold her until another eleven years passed. Even though I was horrified by this… this nightmare I was slowly accepting as real, the sheer realization I wasn't alone in it and much less that she was safe here with me was enough to shock my mind back into utter focus. However, before she replied to Mr. D and spilled our insanity out she wanted or even needed to hear that it was all alright from me. I had already freaked enough that I could only imagine that my actions had caused no end of alarm within her. So I had no choice. I just breathed in deeply and tried to calm my nerves before muttering, "It's okay Annabeth. Everything's going to be okay."

"Mr. D, what's going on here?" Chiron asked but the wine god just simply held up his hand to silence the centaur.

She looked at me so sorrowful for the tiniest instant before her expression softened to one of acceptance and care. Finally she answered the camp leader. "I remember everything he does. Right up to when we were attacked." Over the next ten minutes she spent the time describing the details of how the beast in the Stygian armor had ignited the sky, how he had come down in the flames. She told of the way he threw me across the lawn like a little boy throwing an action figure to make it 'fly' and how I hit the car. That was where my memories ended but Annabeth still had a little bit more to tell. Finally, the last thing she spoke of was the way the beast had attacked her, knocking her aside like she was nothing more than an inconsequential gnat in his attention before he turned back to me. After that, her world had gone black too. "… I wish I could tell you more Lord Dionysus… but I honestly don't know what happened after that." She mumbled as she looked at him pleadingly in the hopes he might accept her explanation.

Mr. D's attention turned back to me but I couldn't return his gaze. Instead I found my eyes locking with those of the confused centaur sitting in his wheelchair in the corner of the room. Chiron only looked at me suspiciously as though he was feeling the same amount of straight disorientation that I had felt since I had woke up on the porch of the Big House. He didn't know what was going on but knew he was missing something monumental, kind of the way I had felt years ago when I had first fought Mrs. Dodds back before learning about the kind of world I really lived in, before I learned about the Camp or Western Civilization or anything else. He was lost and knew it but just didn't know why he was.

"Chase, Jackson; do _not_ breathe a single word of this to anyone in this camp. For now… you two are just campers." Mr. D's words were harsh and direct; he wasn't even trying to annoy us by calling Annabeth or me some randomly close name today. He understood the gravity of our situation and his drunkard nature was gone like a flickering candle blown out. "Chiron, I have to go home for a little while… I have some urgent business I must discuss with the others. Come with me, I need to give you some instructions for now..."

"But sir, w-what's going on? Does it have something to do with the bolt?" Chiron stammered out, dumbfounded by what was going on around him.

"Damn the bolt. Damn the bolt… and damn us all." Mr. D ground out as he walked through the door ahead of the centaur, his fists clenching before the door shut behind him and Chiron.

Immediately the vines withered and wilted off of me and I was across the room with Annabeth in my arms, my heart racing so fast I felt like I could die from the pulse. Even though she was taller than me her body seemed to shrink and melt in my hold. We were suddenly alone in the room and lost in a silence that super-ceded that buzzing roar of activity. Everything was nonexistent besides her and me. I remember whispering to her, telling her that everything was going to be alright, that we would fix this all somehow. But Annabeth… She just stood there and buried her head on my shoulder and cried.

**~*~*~**

**Me**: To all the people who asked me to continue you this, well thank you all and ask and you shall receive. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I know both Chiron and Mr. D are a little OOC but I had to make them that way for now at least. With that being said though, I'm out for the night and will be back with Chapter 4 soon enough. Drop me a review and peace out.


	4. Chapter 4

**Me**: Back again for round four on this little ditty. First off, to answer a question that was asked in one of the reviews. To Supercpro, well you'll just have to wait and see. I don't plan on tipping my hand regarding anyone just yet suffice to say that Nico will be involved in the story at some point or another. However, I will grant that what I have planned for him is… shall we say slightly disturbing? Anyways, enjoy the chapter and drop me review. See ya.

**~*~*~**

**Chapter 4: I Terrorize The Camp Terror**

**~*~*~**

I didn't know how long we had stayed there in that tiny infirmary room but by the time Annabeth finally wiped her eyes and left me alone night had started to fall over Camp Half-Blood. The horizon over the strawberry fields glowed with a mixture of oranges and reds and blues as the night chased the daylight away like a scared animal. We had taken the whole afternoon to get everything right, to get our story straight so that we could preserve some sense of normalcy for the other campers who were completely in the dark as to what exactly was going on around them. For now, we had to let everything play out as it did originally at least until Mr. D returned from informing all the other gods what he had seen in my head. I couldn't imagine how they would react to the images of the war that was speeding down the tracks, how Zeus would feel seeing his Thalia well and fighting like a strong soldier once more, or most importantly how Hermes would take the thought of his son falling under the influence of the greatest threat Olympus had ever known. However, all of that was beyond me for now. I had to focus on how I was going to live here again until Annabeth and I figured a way out of all this.

So that meant that, for now at least, I had to just be another new camper whose heritage was unknown. We had decided that the two of us would go through everything in the same way that we had from the start of our lives together eleven years earlier. Until Poseidon acknowledged me or Mr. D forced me to reveal the secrets living inside my head, I would live in Hermes cabin and try desperately not to beat Luke unconscious and then tie him to a tree until I had knocked some sense into him regarding what he would do in the next few years. That one might be a _bit_ of a challenge.

But… most importantly, I could not openly show any affection towards the person I cared most for.

Before we left the Big House's infirmary Annabeth had confessed to me the she had been 'awake' as we started calling it for almost three days now, finding herself in this disturbing return to our pasts the same night that I had defeated the Minotaur. She told me about having to control herself when she first saw me again and how it confirmed all of her worst suspicions right then and there. I was amazed by her self-restraint… she had always been the more mature of the two of us but it made me sad that I had put her through such an ordeal.

From the porch of the Big House I looked out over the camp for a moment as I steeled my nerves. It was so normal but still so alien in a way I could not put my finger on. I began to walk, crossing over the small creek in the middle of camp as I made my way up toward the cabins.

The twelve of them looked so desolate without the added wall of cabins devoted to all the other gods and goddesses besides the main Pantheon. I missed seeing the children of Iris, Hecate, Nemesis and all the rest but I guess I had just grown so accustomed to seeing the giant square of cabins that the horseshoe the twelve currently made just didn't feel right to me. It especially didn't seem right that there were no children coming from any of the cabins belonging to the Big Three.

Eleven years down the road, the cabins belonging to Zeus' and Poseidon's Cabins had become populated in their own right, as had Hades' after it was built, because it turned out that none of the Big Three had come close to really honoring the original Oath but that Thalia, myself, Nico and Bianca were just the first ones discovered. Zeus' cabin particularly had children of all ages in it because he was just the kind of guy with a lot of… love… to give. Yeah, let's just go with that. Over in Hades' cabin Nico had gained a single half-brother and sister, the boy three years younger than him and the girl five years younger. He told me once that the little girl, an Italian girl like Nico himself, reminded him a lot of Bianca before he became a camper. In my cabin meanwhile, I had gained a set of three identical new younger brothers that had become known around the camp just as the triplets though their individual names were Elias, Ethan, and Elijah Blanch in addition to my Cyclops half-brother Tyson. I had actually been part of the party that led them to Camp Half-Blood and the experience had shown me that I actually enjoyed the thought of finding another sibling somewhere or having them come to the camp. It was kind of cool to learn that you have family all over the place.

In the light of the setting sun I made my way to Hermes' cabin, more informally known as Cabin 11. It still looked as worn down and old as ever with its dull and chipped brown paint along with the rusted golden caduceus hanging over the cabin door.

Apprehensively I reached out and grabbed hold of the cabin door, breathing deeply as I readied myself for whatever situation I could. "Okay Percy, you can do this. Three… Two… Wuh-"

The door in front of me swung open before I could take my hand off the handle, nearly nailing me right in the face as I was greeted by the scarred smile of Luke Castellan.

"Well well well! Hey guys, I told you he'd be headed here as soon as Big D got done screwing around inside his head!" Luke was just as I remembered him: the same confident and charming smile, the same cool blue eyes that stared out at the world with an air of mischievousness that all the kids of Hermes Cabin seemed to share. Even with the scar that seemed to hook to the corner of his mouth he seemed perfectly content, perfectly happy. I almost could push the memories out of my head of all that he had done… or all he would do, I guess. "Come on in kid, we've been waiting for you. I'm Luke Castellan. Welcome to Hermes Cabin."

(I)

"Okay so where to start? Oh yeah, these are the kids of Cabin Eleven. Now before you go off and ask if we're all the kids of Hermes I'll just tell ya that this where everyone comes if they're undetermined. I guess you could say I kinda figured you would be coming to our cabin, almost all the newbies do." Luke explained as he quickly introduced me to a few of the more noticeable members of the cabin. It was weird having to play the role of the new camper once again; I wanted to stop him just to tell him I already knew everything he was saying to me but I had to maintain appearances so I let him continue.

"'Undetermined'… So you mean everyone that doesn't know who their parent is." I made the connection that anyone would have made.

"Yeah, I know it's shocking that a bunch of gods and goddesses who go around creating little Mini-Me's of themselves can't own up to it but that's how it goes. So until the god or goddess that's the parent of an undetermined camper claims them as their own they stay here." He continued on sarcastically after he finished introducing me to the rest of the over-crowded cabin. "Hermes is the god of travelers so we've always kinda been the wayfarer's inn here in camp. Kind of explains why the place is so trashed."

"So then how long will I stay here?"

"Well that's all up to the big boys and girls on Olympus. Until one of them decides to take responsibility for the little bundle of joy they left in the mortal world known as Y-O-U, you can go ahead and consider this home sweet home. So let's get you settled. Connor, Travis; you two have the customary care package ready?" As he asked that question the two Stoll twins seemingly appeared out of nowhere from across the cabin; I knew they had probably been there the whole time but they just had this way to blend about them, it was probably what made them great at pranks and raids on the camp store. They were dressed identically in orange camp shirts and blue jeans and even their hairstyle was the same today.

"Yup, got it ready two nights ago boss." Connor replied as he passed a small gym bag to Luke. Or was it Travis who replied and had the bag? I had never really known them before Luke's defection and as of right now they were the same height so I couldn't determine who was who.

"Great! Well you can go ahead and call this your stuff." Luke explained as he unzipped the bag and revealed the contents of it to me. "We've got a few spare camp shirts and an extra pair of jeans for you – I kinda guessed at your size when you were tied up there in the Big House so if they're too big just give me a heads up and we'll fix you up good. Also got you a pair of shoes; you'll need them around here. Next, we have the usual set up of stuff you might need for the showers; shampoo, a toothbrush and some toothpaste, and most importantly some deodorant. If you don't want to wake up at night with a nasty surprise in your bed I suggest you use it often. Place already smells enough without someone adding B.O. to the mix. And last but not least we have a few other things to help your stay here in demigod land be a little more pleasant for the time being. A few squares of ambrosia for the days you get wrecked etcetera..."

"Thanks Luke." I spoke appreciatively as I looked down at the items inside the bag, a wave of nostalgia washing over me once more as I thought about the way this had happened originally. "This is really nice of you."

"Don't mention it, Jackson. Taking care of the new kids comes with the territory of being nicest guy in camp." Now that one almost made me lose it and let out of a snicker but I held my composure. "Anyways, let's get you a bed. There's a free one over in the back corner of the room that hasn't been used in a while so it should be good as long as you don't mind the blood stains from its previous occupant."

"Uh…" I muttered like an idiot. I figured he was probably joking but this wasCamp Half-Blood.

"I'm just messing with you, kid. The bed's fine and should already have some clean sheets and a blanket over on it for you. Consider it yours. Now anything else just talk to either Connor or Travis; they're my go to guys and they can find just about anything you might need here in Camp."

"Okay…"

My attention drifted off as I thought about how weird it was going through all the same things twice but Luke interpreted it as the new camper being overwhelmed like most usually are when they come here for the first time. "Don't worry, Jackson. We all go through the whole 'The whole world's a lie' thing for a little while after we get here. You get used to it sooner or later."

"Okay then…So where can I take a shower?" I asked as though I didn't know my way around the camp. Even though I had only been in the room for ten minutes at most, I already had to fight to act normal so a little water would do me good.

"Wow. Sure you need one after what happened in the lake?" He replied with that same charming but sarcastic smile of his. "Don't worry kid, I'm just messing with you. Yeah, the bathrooms are over across the field near the Mess Hall… er… that giant building with the columns up the hill. The showers will be to the right in between here and there, got it?"

"Yeah, thanks."

"Oh and Jackson, one more thing. Welcome to Camp Half Blood."

(I)

I climbed out of the shower feeling a little more right in the world as the hot water left little billows of steam as it dried on my young body. Looking in the fogged-over mirror I felt another pang of sickness as I saw the thin cheeks and boyish face belonging to the twelve year-old staring back at me from the other side. I wanted to smash the mirror into a thousand little shards right then and there but I would only see a thousand little mirrors in its stead then and that would only make me angrier.

Sighing in defeat, I turned away from the reflection and just finished drying myself off while looked at the spare Camp Half-Blood t-shirt and pair of blue jeans that Luke and the rest of Cabin eleven had 'procured' from the camp store. For a second I hesitated, wondering if either of the Stoll brothers had had a hand in 'preparing' the shirt to give it to me. It made me question whether or not they would prank a kid on his first real day in the camp which made me think about the good twenty or thirty kids they had over the last six years in my time which didn't alleviate my concern at all. However, I was naked save my boxers and had to wear something so I just gave up and slipped on the shirt and jeans, happy not to be writhing in agony afterwards. With one last glance in the mirror I just grabbed my stuff, slipped on my shoes and turned to leave the bathroom as I heard the creaking moan of the front door opening meaning another camper was probably coming for a shower himself.

"It's all clear for you in there." I called out to whoever had just entered as I came out around the corner that separated the bathroom from the locker room out front. However, immediately the sour attitude I was in just grew fifty times worse as I was face to face with four evil-eyed middle-school boys that looked like they were pumped up on steroids from Ares, led by none other than my favorite token child of the god of war: Clarisse La Rue.

"Hey you're that new kid that messed up the amphitheater! Percy Jackson, right?" Clarisse was just as I remembered her as a kid but seemed so much less threatening now. Maybe that came from the fact I was still affected by the Curse of Achilles for some reason or just because of the fact I now had the memories of eleven years of fighting monsters and Titans lodged deep in my now preteen brain but either way I couldn't help but stare at her completely unafraid. Truth be told, I found the fact she was even trying to scare me a little bit amusing but that humor was quickly overridden by my growing desire to hurt something. Must have been her little gift from Ares; he had that same effect on me every time I was around him. She had four of her brothers with her today, each of them looking like teenage recruits for a biker gang. They all shared the same broad shoulders, strong jaw and look of cheerful rage in their eyes and each one of them filled me with an equal desire to bash their faces in.

"Yeah, that's my name… or at least that's what everyone tells me nowadays. And I don't know if you looked around but this is a boy's bathroom." I pointed out, feigning disinterest. I fought not to clench my fists as I stared her down; after all that had happened today I was easily agitated and itching for any sort of way to relieve my pent up aggression. And if Clarisse continued on this little path toward self-destruction like I knew she was about to, I would be more than happy to turn her and her half-brothers into that relief.

"Yeah I know but I just had to introduce myself. Clarisse La Rue, daughter of Ares!" She said with a bit of showmanship in introducing herself that kind of reminded me of Hulk Hogan with how she seemed to flex as she spoke. "After seeing you tied up in the Infirmary today I feel like I already know you so well so I figured you should meet me and some of the children of Ares on a more personal level just so you can get to know us. After all most of my brothers and sisters just happened to be out there right when you sent that little wave of yours cresting over the walls and left us soaking wet."

"And your point is?" I knew where this was heading and quite honestly, I wanted to goad her on until I was given leave to strike back.

"My point is that now we owe you a little bit of payback. Now, I don't know exactly how you pulled off that stunt of yours but it got a lot of us wet when we were just minding our own business. However, I think it's pretty clear that none of us can do what you did out there so we'll just have to find some other way to help you shower up." She retorted with a sneer. My blood was boiling now as her four half-brothers circled around me in an effort to show their apparent superiority in numbers. I found the whole thing almost laughable; even without a weapon I could have left them all bloody even if they had five times as many people with them! But I could not just openly attack them; Annabeth was already going to kill me whenever we had a private moment for what I was about to do so I had to at least control the pent-up rage until they attacked me first. I _had_ to wait until this was in self-defense. "And seeing as we just happen to be in the boy's bathroom right now, I think we happen to have a nice supply of fresh, running water in all these toilets just waiting to help you get as wet as we like. Wouldn't you agree?"

I had to force myself not to start laughing now at how moronic she sounded while trying to sound threatening. So instead I just kept my cool and replied as monotonically and sarcastically as I could. "Wow, I'm impressed. A kid from Ares actually able to string together a real sentence! That truly is _amazing_… but what would your dear little daddy say to that? I thought he was against using any brain power, right?"

Five seemingly identical pairs of dark brown eyes around me boiled with liquid rage as I spoke those words; the perfect reaction.

"I am going to murder you for insulting Ares you little bastard!" She spat as the two similarly built goons behind me tried to grab at me.

I let the first of the two pin my arms before I started to move. It was simple enough to counter his little restraint as I lifted my left foot then brought it down hard on his left knee while I spun out of his grasp. He went down in pain to his knees instantly, giving me a perfect line of attack to his shoulders. Bringing my freed left arm up I slammed the base of my fist right against the collarbone like a hammer with just enough force to send him to the ground but not enough to break it. Without missing a beat, I brought the same fist across the gap between him and his cohort while grabbing on to the other side of his waist, nailing him with an uppercut right into his rib cage that sent him to the ground gasping for air and wheezing in agony.

The other two that accompanied Clarisse tried their luck now as they stumbled into fighting stances, already shocked and disoriented by the fact that a twelve-year-old kid nowhere close to their size was ripping them apart like wet tissue. The boy on Clarisse's right stepped forward first, clenching his fist and drawing back as though he hoped to nail me with a simple haymaker. I had to fight the urge to let him actually hit me right then and there just to see if it would even sting. It would have been simply invigorating to drive a deep fear into him that came with the knowledge that he could not even come close to beating me before I took him down. Yet…I was supposed to control myself and I was having too much fun with this already so instead I just stopped his punch with my right hand and pulled him in before driving my knee into his stomach.

As he slumped over my knee I released him from my grip and turned my attention to the remaining son of Ares as I cracked my knuckles and rolled my neck. He alone seemed to get the message. He turned and ran out the bathroom door past Clarisse, leaving her standing there silent in the presence of a beast she had just unwittingly sacrificed three of her brothers to.

I was upon her instantly, moving so fast she cried out in terror as I grabbed her by her chin and pulled her head down close to me so that her ear was only an inch away from my lips.

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean anything by it! I swear!" She started to blubber as she tried to fight against my grip. Even though she was a good six inches taller and nearly twice the size of this fleshy preteen prison I was trapped in she seemed to shrink in my grip like a kid being disciplined by an angry parent, her fear making her seem small to me. The only time I had ever seen Clarisse truly scared before was eight years ago in my timeline, back when she had first come up from the Labyrinth. This wasn't nearly as bad as the fear I had seen in her eyes back then but it definitely conveyed the fact that she understood she was not dealing with some weakling she could terrorize. "I was just going to haze you a little! Promise!"

"I know you were, Clarisse. I know." I whispered, my so very young-sounding voice taking on a sinister quality that would have done justice to some of Hades' better rants as I let my emotions take over and said more than I wanted to. "And you know what? In another life, I would have just let you go on your little way after maybe bursting the pipes in this restroom and soaking you again. But I have had a very interesting… very infuriating last three days. Everything that should make sense right now is just as twisted as the snakes around Hermes' caduceus and so my brain is more than a little fried. I am tired and weary but most of all I am very, very easily angered. Now, I want you to know one thing: I have fought things the likes of which you cannot imagine. The Minotaur? Hah, that was a freaking stroll through the daisies compared to the depths of evil I have raised a blade against. And now, instead of living my life out in peace and quiet like I have _earned_;I am subject to some galactic eff you that the gods themselves probably won't give me the decency and explain! Now if it's not too much to ask for you to not pull stupid shit like this and realize an accident when one happens I'd like you to. So kindly stop giving me a reason to kill you."

"Y-yes!" She squeaked. I carefully smiled and pushed her backwards right then, letting her drop to her butt on the bathroom floor as I calmly stepped over her and walked out. In the few minutes I had been inside the boys' bathroom after my shower the campers had started to file on down to the Mess Hall for the evening meal and for whatever announcements Chiron was going to make. Bracing myself for anything, I hurried after them.

"Jackson? Great timing! I had left you a note in the cabin to come to the Mess Hall but you can just come with us to dinner." Luke asked as I silently slipped behind him into the line making its way across the field toward the Mess Hall. "Are you alright? Your face is blood red and you look like you're about ready to kill someone."

"Er… I'm alright. Just had a little trouble in the bathroom after my shower;" I murmured without any real amount of enthusiasm as I tried to force a smile. It was hard to smile around him; my brain kept reminding me that he had already betrayed this whole camp.

"Huh, I hear they make medicines for that nowadays." He sarcastically retorted with a smirk. "Anyways, come on. I'm hungry."

As we walked into the massive Mess Hall, Hestia stared at me while I filed in behind the leader of Hermes' Cabin, the spheres of smoldering fire that rested where her eyes should have been glowing with a fierce intensity to them. Hestia's gaze was piercing and intrusive but without the warm kindness I was so used to seeing when I saw the goddess of the hearth every summer tending to the fire, presumably because she no longer knew me like I knew her. I wondered if Mr. D's little story about what he had seen inside my brain had already reached her ears or if she was just simply curious and watched me out of boredom. Either way I silently wondered if I should say something to her but nothing came to mind. So instead I nodded across the room to her just to show I recognized her. Her expression changed a little at this but she continued to watch me.

"Come on Jackson, our table's over here." Luke called back, using his newfound favorite nickname for me as we quickly made our way over to Cabin Eleven's spot in the hall.

We shuffled our way through the crowd and grabbed our plates, Luke showing me how to offer a portion of mine to the gods as I was not supposed to know anything about that yet. The Mess Hall was packed with a thronging mass of teenage campers in their orange T-shirts that all stared at me with nervous curiosity like I was some sort of circus sideshow. I could faintly make out their whispers as I made my way back to the table for Cabin Eleven, a snatch of conversation about "the Minotaur slayer" here and "the emotionally unstable lake-freak" there. I could even hear bits and pieces about my little performance in the boys' bathroom from the one goon from Ares cabin that had run off only to join up with his table. In particular his description of me as a young Hades made me smile as it made me wonder how the teenage boy would react to someone like Nico.

Making my way back to the Cabin Eleven table I looked across the room just in time to see Annabeth sitting down at the table designated for the children of Athena. She was not saying a word to her half-brothers and half-sisters sitting around her but instead had her eyes locked squarely on the plate in front of her as she pushed the food on it around. I wanted her to look up for just a moment, just long enough to try and gauge what was going on in that infinitely deep mind of hers regarding everything that had happened since I woke up, hell since our last night together in Montauk but her attention remained fixated on the plate so I just gave up.

"Campers, if I can have your attention. May I have your attention please?" Chiron's voice calling out from the other end of the hall near the fire brought my attention back to the rest of the world as I turned and faced him. As I gazed across the stone-lined room with its beautiful columns I could not help but noticed he looked… paler; his skin seemed almost stark white when next to the small patches of brown hair that started on his chest and extended downwards. Silently I wondered if that was because of the instructions that Mr. D had left with him before running off to Olympus, whatever those may have been. "Well then, good evening everyone. It's good to see you all well once again."

I had to admit he was right on that one. Even given how disconcerting it was to see some of the long dead campers once more it still felt just good inside to see Beckendorf over with the rest of Hephaestus cabin again or Silena Beauregard leading the kids from Aphrodite once more. Yeah it was weird but I never really knew how much I missed them until I was now dealing with seeing them all over again.

"Now, before you return to your cabins for the night, I have a few small announcements that need to be made. First, Mr. D has had to leave the camp for a few days and has left me in charge for the time being." Chiron spoke, no real shock there. "Everything will be proceeding as normal while he is away; all camp activities and training sessions will be continued on schedule. The only closing we have for the time being is that there will be no performances in the amphitheater until the end of the week given some… water damage that has occurred." It was almost eerie how every single head in the Mess Hall seemed to stop and turn to look at me right as he said that. But then again I guess I really shouldn't have been surprised. News about any new camper standing out from the norm traveled at the speed of Apollo's sports car around here. I honestly wanted to wave at all them right then.

"Yes now as I was saying the amphitheater will be temporarily closed until some minor repairs are taken care of. Thus, in lieu of the recitation of the works of Homer that was scheduled for tomorrow night, we have a special treat. I have decided that Annabeth Chase and Luke Castellan will be the team captains of the red and blue teams respectively because tomorrow night there will be a game of capture the flag."

The whole room erupted into a roar of cheers and excited murmurings as the cabins instantly began talking amongst themselves about how they would side for the match. Meanwhile, beside me Luke suddenly became as giddy as a thief in a bank without a security system. "This is great! Jackson, tomorrow you get to see what camp is truly all about!"

"Having fun by playing a game?" I suggested trying to sound enthusiastic.

"Sorry but wrong today, newbie. The correct answer we were looking for was getting to bash the other cabins' heads in and then humiliate them. Hermes and blue team all the way!" Well I had to give him one thing: he was definitely great at acting like he liked this place. All across the Cabin Eleven table everyone else was getting pumped up by his little explanation while they eagerly started discussing strategy of how best to capture the flag. However, given that Annabeth was going to be the enemy general I had my doubts as to whether or not they really could start to outsmart her. And that was when I realized one tiny detail that had slipped my mind in the chaos of Chiron's announcement.

"Oh shit." I spat out; my eyes shooting wide as I immediately turned my attention back across the room at the blonde-haired love of my life only to see her staring back at me with that same look of utter dismay. For now I was in Hermes' Cabin under Luke, and she was leading Athena and the red team which meant one thing: we were on opposite teams.

**~*~*~**

**Me**: Really quick, sorry it took so long to update this thing from last chapter. It's been a very busy last three weeks for me and ran into a spot of writer's block just to make matters worse for me but at long last I'm finished with Chapter 4 and will get busy churning out the next chapter soon. I have to say I enjoyed making parts of this chapter a little more light hearted than the last, particularly with Luke's interactions with Percy. I have to tell you all I really enjoyed kind of tweaking Luke's character a little bit from the way he is in the book to something a little more along the lines of the person he is in the film because he seemed like that mischievous and slick kind of cool to me in the movie but not so much in the book. But that's enough with my ranting for now. Anyways, drop me a review and be honest about your opinion. See you all next time. Peace.


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